‘I know,’ she said, her face radiant. ‘When you are free for a moment, have a message delivered to me. I will meet you here, or in one of the gardens. We will be afforded only the time and privacy to talk.’
‘Agreed,’ said Haraldr, his golden face beaming at her. ‘Let us clasp arms in the manner of comrades.’ He clutched her lithe forearms in his huge grip and laughed. ‘I will consult with you at my earliest conceivable convenience, esteemed Eminence.’
She bowed and smirked. ‘Verily, your Hetairarchship, it will be an overawing honour surpassed only by the appearance of the glorious Pantocrator Himself at my morning ablutions.’ They looked at each other and enjoyed their spoof of court flummery for a moment. Then Maria bowed and turned to leave. After a few steps she turned and said, ‘I am so glad you are alive,’ before waving farewell and skipping off among the gawking dignitaries.
‘Uncle!’ whined Michael Kalaphates. ‘How can you run off on this . . . this excursion at this time!’ Michael swooped his dice off the ivory tabletop and bolted to his feet as if the Bulgars were at the door. ‘You are all that stands between me and a life of ascetic contemplation!’ Michael swept his hand at the lavish trappings of his hall; the silk tapestries from Persia, the silver candelabra, the gilded chairs. ‘Pity me, Uncle! If you can scarcely endure the life of contemplation I lead in this palace, can you imagine me in a monk’s cell? Uncle! You are all I have!’
Constantine threw his arms around the trembling Caesar. ‘Nephew, nephew, you know you are quite capable of fending for yourself.’
‘I am extremely anxious, Uncle,’ said Michael; he smoothed his silk robe as if in eliminating the wrinkles he was exerting control over himself. ‘Now I am not even admitted to the palace. I tried three times last week.’ Michael clutched the dice in his balled fist. ‘It is all so plain. Remove me from the public view, and when everyone has quite forgotten I exist, tie me up some night and carry me off to Mount Athos. That is the plan, Uncle.’
‘I assure you that I won’t permit that,’ said Constantine. ‘I may be of little consequence to our Emperor and the Orphanotrophus, but my blood flows in their veins and I can vouchsafe that I will remind them of that if they move you one stade from this house. I was Strategus of Antioch! They seem to forget that I am a man of ability!’
‘I know you are a man of ability, Uncle, as well as my dearest relative and most cherished friend. That is why the thought of your leaving for even two days quite unravels me.’
Constantine clasped Michael’s shoulders. ‘We need to find a weapon to use against them. I have been sitting in that gaol next to the Numera for two months to try to stumble over something. Nothing. Until this Maleinus individual appeared. I am not particularly given to the notion that the Pantocrator personally prepares our agenda for each day, but I must confess to the singular intimation that the Hand of Providence is guiding me - and you as well, Nephew - towards the Holy Establishment at Prote.
‘Of course you are right, Uncle. I only wish I was not subjected to this confinement. Together we could have made a pleasant excursion of it. I’d wager this Maleinus is fond of dice and horses. When will you go?’
‘The sooner the better, Nephew. I will be back in three days.’
Michael nodded. ‘Bless you, Uncle. If I survive to tell this tale, I will reward you in any way I can.’
Constantine and Michael embraced. The Caesar escorted his uncle to the door and watched him ride off, through the ring of Khazar guards and down the broad paved road, until he passed from sight behind a cypress grove. Michael turned and re-entered his ante-chamber, then stopped to stare at the mosaic on the wall to his right, a lifelike depiction of an eagle devouring a snake. His face began to crimson deeply. Suddenly he threw his dice at the picture so savagely that the ivory cubes and ceramic tesserae exploded into shards and dust.
‘Monastery!’ Michael shrieked, his neck corded and every vein in his face seeming to stand out. He raised his head, his throat gurgling slightly, towards the gold-coffered ceiling. This is not what you promised me, sir!’ he shouted in vicious, spitting syllables. ‘This is not at all what you promised! Do you recall the conversation we had that day, sir? You stood beside me. Your hand was in mine. You made me tell you my secrets while all of them were watching. Do you remember I told you how I could see the music floating in the dome, and how much I wanted to touch myself, and how my father wouldn’t let me? And you told me that your father had never fouled his mother?’ He screamed madly again. ‘You told me I could make them all pay for what they did to me! It was your idea, and now you have abandoned me to them! You are going to let them take me to a monastery!’ Michael quieted, but his neck stiffened and his head jerked up as if he had been pulled by his ears. ‘What? What?’ he said softly. He lowered his head slightly. ‘Very well,’ he said, seemingly half to himself, half to his unseen conversant. ‘But remember that I am not a patient man.’
‘Soon we will have the torpid heat.’ The Empress Zoe ran her ringer along the surface of the silver wine cask, tracing the engraved outline of a dancing nymph in the finely beaded condensation. ‘Does the heat make you long for Thule, Hetairarch Haraldr?’
‘I think of home often. The heat is not relative to the issue.’ Haraldr had dreaded this interview, and yet he would have requested an audience with her had she not requested to see him. The matter had to be settled.
‘Yes,’ said Zoe. She leaned back against the cushions of her sitting couch. A gust of dry, warm wind swept through the arcaded balcony, and she blinked her gold-thread lashes. ‘I have often felt that there is a claim on you.’ She waved her hand, and her delicate ringers seemed to stroke the thick, fragrant air. ‘Not merely the kind of claim that one heart places on another but the claim a land makes on its people. Or perhaps the claim a land makes on the man who would rule over her.’
Haraldr stiffened and drew his torso erect; he had been uncomfortable when she had asked him to take a couch opposite her, and now he wished he had remained standing.
She was certainly only guessing - this business of the prince who had come with the Rus fleet was still about, albeit now a vague, virtually forgotten rumour. But Haraldr had hoped he would never hear it again.
‘Maria says you came from an important family in Thule,’ continued Zoe in a slow, deep timbre. ‘Do you aspire to rule over your home some day?’
Haraldr decided that she was not setting a trap, that in fact this was her way of pointing to the snare in which they were both caught. ‘Yes. I have thought of ruling some day. In Norway, my home. It is now my fancy. But then I once, for a moment of madness, fancied myself ruler of Rome. And in that intoxication I dreamed that I took Rome in my arms.’ Haraldr inhaled silently and held the breath.
Zoe’s eyes blinked and closed. ‘I understand your vision. I saw it once too. It was a dream, exquisitely beautiful, as dreams often are.’ She paused and stroked her forehead lightly, as if brushing away a gnat. ‘My husband awakened me from this dream.’
Haraldr’s heart thudded. ‘Yes, I believe that I was awakened in a similar fashion and saw that I had dreamed.’
Zoe’s finger traced over the engraved silver nymph again. ‘The beauty of dreams is that life does not hold us accountable for them.’
Haraldr eased backwards, the relief surrounding him like an eddy of the warm breeze. ‘And life can never entirely destroy the beauty of dream.’ In his gratitude he felt a residue of the passion that had joined them once.
‘The beauty, no. The substance, yes. Life so often destroys the substance of dreams, and yet so often provides us with new dreams. New beauties.’ Zoe sat erect and propped herself up with a silk-sheathed elbow. Her blue eyes had a diamond-like glimmer. ‘I have already thanked you in the name of Rome and the purple-born Empress for the lives of my people and the safety of our Empire. But you also know me as a woman, Hetairarch.’ Zoe’s full crimson lips curled with the merest hint of salacious irony. ‘And I have not thanked you as a woman for saving the life o
f my husband.’
‘He saved my life as much as I saved his, Majesty.’
Zoe nodded. ‘Yes. Like Achilleus, he has taken up his sword again, clad in the armour of the gods.’ Zoe stared as raptly as if the Emperor stood before her in his golden breastplate. ‘He will come to me, Hetairarch Haraldr. I have beseeched the Virgin with my prayers. Now that he is well, he will come to me.’
Haraldr sincerely hoped that Zoe would find this dream fulfilled. ‘Yes. He is a proud man, and justly so, and he did not want you to see him reduced by his illness. But I can assure you that his health grows more robust with each day. When he is the man you remember, then you will have him again.’
‘You are a gracious man, Hetairarch.’ Zoe eased back against the silk cushions. ‘You made love to me, and yet you do not begrudge me the resurrection of my love. So in kind I will not begrudge you the restoration of your love.’ Zoe leaned forward and looked at Haraldr earnestly. ‘Maria says that you two have conversed.’
‘Yes. We are starting to know each other.’
‘That will not be easy for you, Hetairarch. I have known Maria all her life, and yet she remains one of the great mysteries of my life. For all her beauty and . . . spontaneity, she has an ancient soul, profound and perhaps unfathomable. I do not know the depths of it.’ Zoe smiled warmly and the small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes became visible. ‘When she was a small child, my sister and I took her to summer at Botanci, on the sea. It seemed to us that she stared at the sea for weeks, nothing but that. And yet she seemed so happy to be alone, as if she had a secret child’s friend, a nymph who came up from the water when we were not looking. Finally we asked her who was out there. I remember her words so clearly because they were too sad for any child to speak. “Everyone,” she answered us. “The world will end in fire. I want to remember the time when there was only water.” ‘
Haraldr tried to see Maria as a child and wondered if even then, as she sat before the sea that had watched her grow and would see her wither and turn to dust, if even then she was moving towards him, and he to her. ‘She has told me that you were her parents’ friend. Were they worthy people?’
Zoe’s eyes were distant, as if she now sat beside that little girl and also stared into eternity. ‘They were the best of people. There were none more . . . worthy. They loved her more than . . .’ Zoe’s lips quivered. ‘How they loved her. Perhaps they would also have seen into her weary, tender breast and understood her. The rest of us can only love her.’
‘I want to love her and understand her.’
‘Yes.’ Zoe’s eyes were flat again, unmoved. ‘Do you want to take her to this Norway when you return?’
‘I don’t know. It doesn’t follow that what a man plants in a summer meadow he can reap beneath the winter ice.’
Zoe laughed, a silvery chime that was pleasant despite its melancholy. ‘How apt, Hetairarch Haraldr. I am glad you have come to us from Norway. Well, we must enjoy this summer, for it may be the most beautiful we will ever remember.’ She pressed her hand flat against the cold silver cask and looked at him and smiled.
‘There you see it, Eminence!’ Giorgios Maleinus shouted into the southerly bluster. The reefed sail of the small galley clattered the yard-arm above him; sixteen crewmen, scruffy labourers who could scarcely row in unison, bent to and fro at the oars. ‘Prote! East to Eden, south to Prote, I say! Glorious, is it not, Eminence?’
Constantine thanked the Pantocrator that He had not brought him to the Isle of Prote to acquire a monastery. This island was small, rocky, graced only with a verdant, wooded spine like a green cap on a bald man’s head. Even if the Imperial Palace had been placed somewhere behind the groves, the price Maleinus was asking would carry a loss. The island could not support any kind of profitable husbandry, not even a herd of goats or a single winepress, not to mention the vast acreage of arable land required to make a monastic establishment truly profitable. If I actually had intent to buy, mused Constantine, I would at this juncture wring Maleinus’s neck.
The jetty on the northern end of the island was formed from large rocks, obviously stripped from the island’s own craggy flanks and tumbled into the sea. The galley tied up at a wooden wharf, still in good repair. ‘My lady.’ Maleinus gestured gallantly to his ‘cousin’, Irene, an ample-breasted woman with proportionately substantial hips and, observed Constantine, enough paint on her sagging face to decorate an Imperial galley. Constantine gratefully reflected that he was not one of those eunuchs troubled by such desires; Maleinus’s inducement would perhaps be put to better use by promising her to this crew of cutthroats to ensure they didn’t make off with the galley in their master’s absence.
The stairs, neatly hewn in raw rock, led to a completely disused complex consisting of a small stone chapel and a row of uninhabitable - at least by any civilized standards - cells. ‘It appears that one would have to do more than shoo away the birds, Maleinus,’ said Constantine sourly; what could he possibly discover in this miserable wreck?
‘No, no. Eminence,’ prostested Maleinus, his face as red as his nose, his lips gulping like a fish as he gasped from the effort of propelling the considerable Irene up the steps. ‘This . . . this ... is merely the convent! It does not even figure in the price. Hasn’t been used for two indictions, if that. No, Eminence, you have not seen the wonders of Prote.’
Constantine walked over to one of the cells and kicked at the door. The decaying planks fractured, and one could hear the scratchy, alarmed rustle of small, unseen creatures. ‘It’s a ghastly place,’ said Irene in the struggling chirp of a large bird with a small voice. ‘To think of the nuns, all closeted away in here.’ To think of you, Irene, thought Constantine, walking the streets of the Venetian Quarter.
‘Well, as I understand, this was once the home to some relative of the Bulgar-Slayer.’
‘Indeed.’ Constantine felt the Pantocrator’s hand lift his sagging spirits. ‘Which relative?’
‘Well, most likely a woman, Eminence!’ Maleinus laughed wetly at his own jest, ending in a hacking cough. ‘Other than that, well, Eminence, you know how rumour dodges our efforts to grasp her and get a good feel of her.’ He winked at Constantine and then at Irene.
The birds fled in noisy regiments as the intruders crossed the forested ridge atop the island. Constantine immediately noted the architectural detailing when the monastery complex revealed itself between neatly arranged rows of cypress trees: the multiple domes of the chapel set on elaborately patterned cornices; deeply recessed arched windows divided with slender marble columns; carved window panels even in the rows of monks’ cells visible just above the thick defensive wall. Theotokos, exclaimed Constantine to himself. Someone with a great deal to atone for, and a great deal to atone with, had been the benefactor of Prote.
That conjecture was amply supported as Maleinus proudly displayed his merchandise: the chapel with its silver chancel screen and superbly executed mosaics; a storeroom full of golden censers and sacramental basins. The monks’ cells had floors of the richest opus-sectile marble, and the gold-tiled fountain in the courtyard near the library would have been suitable for an Imperial residence. Theotokos! Constantine eyed Maleinus with new respect; the old bandit was still asking more than the salvage price of this booty, but not so much that he wouldn’t find some fool at court to give him his price.
‘You see what the word of Giorgios Maleinus is worth now, don’t you, Eminence? Yes, you’ll never see me with some fancy title, but those that have them are not loath to deal when Maleinus comes offering! Now, Eminence, let me lead you to the crowning glory of this Elysium.’
‘Theotokos.’ Constantine could no longer keep his tongue at the sight of the library. Theotokos! There was a profit to be made here simply in the sale of the gem-studded gold, silver and ivory book covers, not to mention the value of the manuscripts. Maleinus must need the cash quickly, Constantine surmised.
‘Indeed, indeed, Eminence.’ Maleinus brushed the dust off a gilded scriptorium
; his red-rimmed eyes suddenly had the vigour - and greed - of a badger contemplating a field-mouse nest. ‘Perhaps not the most extensive library outside our Empress City or your Antioch, but certainly the richest. Yes, Eminence, even an illiterate would soon learn of the glories of Paradise were he to acquire these volumes!’ Maleinus virtually collapsed from his rattling laugh and attendant cough.
‘What is this?’ said Constantine coolly, gesturing to the slightly open sliding door at the west end of the library; he had decided to consider this offering on its own merits. Of course there were details; the cost of shipping these items and the necessary agents in Constantinople had to be figured in.
‘That . . .’ Maleinus paused and shrugged, as if to say that the truth could not hurt him. ‘That, Eminence, is the source of the great mystery of Prote and, I might add, the reason these riches wait to be plucked for the price of a harlot’s favours.’
Constantine slid the door ajar with difficulty and squeezed through the opening. The room was lit by a solitary window that looked out over the exquisite gold fountain. Constantine stared in disbelief at the litter of scattered documents; it appeared as if someone had taken the entire contents of an Imperial bureau and simply had dumped them into this little room. A gilded lectern emerged above the pile of parchment like a lone tree poking above the pumice-buried slopes of a volcano.
‘The Father Abbot was a prodigious correspondent, was he not?’ Maleinus picked up one of the parchments and let it drop without reading it. ‘Letters. Probably would make interesting reading if one had the time or inclination. I saw one addressed to the Logothete of the Praetorium. As you can see, the Father Abbot had access not only to the Heavenly Tribunal but also to the Imperial Court.’
Byzantium - A Novel Page 62